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Imagine this lede atop a national wire service story: CINCINNATI (AP) — Parochial teachers are so ignorant of basic Roman Catholic doctrine the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is giving them a cheat sheet on some of the things that can get them fired.
That is, of course, not the spin that The Associated Press took.
Here’s the actual opening paragraph of an AP story published this week:
Last week, I criticized USA Today’s fast-food cheeseburger of a story on the religious controversy over the new “Noah” movie. Today, I want to praise the filet-mignon level of coverage served up by CNN’s Belief Blog and Godbeat pro Daniel Burke.
Before I do so, I must confess that I have not seen the movie and may not make it soon, as I still need to catch the new Muppet and “Veronica Mars” flicks. Plus, baseball season just started (if you’re a fan, you might enjoy my column on Opening Day in Texas), so my free time is more limited. Smile.
But back on topic: Under the headline “Does God have a prayer in Hollywood?” the in-depth CNN report combines a tractor-trailer load full of meaty material, from the director’s motivation and insight to important background on faith-based films past, present and future. Throughout, the piece provides the kind of details that speak to the beat specialist getting religion.
On this week’s episode of the GetReligion podcast “Crossroads,” host Todd Wilken and I discuss media coverage of the Hobby Lobby case. Or — as our editor Terry Mattingly asked recently — is it really the Hobby Lobby case?
Now, I realize Hobby Lobby is a nationally known brand and that this punchy name fits better in a headline than that of Conestoga Wood, the cabinetmaking company owned by a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania that is also part of the case. Is it possible that “Mennonites fight for free exercise of religion” isn’t as culture-wars friendly a story line as “giant, rich conservative evangelical company fights, etc., etc.”?
Todd wondered if anyone had explored the Mennonite angle. My basic response: I don’t know. (Yes, such enlightening insight makes for great listening. But I digress.)
A USA Today headline declares: “'Noah' hits rough religious waters on-screen.”
The top of the story:
Director Darren Aronofsky has seen his share of controversy in a body of work that has included uncompromising films such as Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. But there hasn’t been anything quite like the storm that has erupted over his treatment of the Old Testament tale featured in Noah, out Friday. The maelstrom has battle-tested studio heads reaching for appropriate biblical comparisons.
“It’s been a unique journey,” says Rob Moore, vice chairman of distributor Paramount Studios. “I actually feel like some combination of Noah preparing for the storm, or Joseph, where you feel like you’re in some foreign land and you’re trying to figure out how to make it all work.”
The story of Noah’s construction of a massive ark to save Earth’s animals from God’s flood-borne wrath is sacred text in the Koran and the Bible, and is one of the most popular stories with children.
Hobby Lobby gets its hearing before the Supreme Court this morning. WASHINGTON — A challenge to part of President Obama’s healthcare law that hits the Supreme Court on Tuesday could lead to one of the most significant religious freedom rulings in the high court’s history.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s health care law gets a return engagement at the Supreme Court (this week) in a case full of hot-button issues: religious freedom, corporate rights, federal regulation, abortion and contraception.
Put another way, it’s a case about God, money, power, sex — and Obamacare.
Hobby Lobby gets its hearing before the Supreme Court this morning. WASHINGTON — A challenge to part of President Obama’s healthcare law that hits the Supreme Court on Tuesday could lead to one of the most significant religious freedom rulings in the high court’s history.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s health care law gets a return engagement at the Supreme Court (this week) in a case full of hot-button issues: religious freedom, corporate rights, federal regulation, abortion and contraception.
Put another way, it’s a case about God, money, power, sex — and Obamacare.
Once or twice (or maybe three or four or five times) in recent weeks, we have criticized The Dallas Morning News’ inability to find anyone to quote who supports the United Methodist Church’s stance on homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The Methodist bishop for the region, Michael “Never Can Be Reached for Comment” McKee, hasn’t helped matters any, from a journalistic perspective. Whether there’s a history between the bishop and the Morning News or he just doesn’t want to be quoted on this matter, I have no idea. Perhaps he silenced his phone during church and forgot to ever turn it back on?
But rather than settle for a “no comment,” GetReligion has made the case that the Morning News needs to find a voice on the “other side” in its coverage of a retired Methodist minister who presided over the wedding of two gay men earlier this month. That is, unless the Dallas newspaper wants to practice advocacy journalism.
So we’re left — still — with explaining to a Pulitzer-winning newspaper how it might practice balanced journalism and treat all sides of a divisive issue such as this fairly.
In a 2006 column about my grandparents, I reflected on my rural upbringing: I close my eyes and I am back in Hayward, a speck on the map in southeastern Missouri’s Bootheel where my Papa and Grandma Ross lived.
I see my grandparents’ wood-paneled station wagon parked outside the two-story house that Papa built himself. Nearby, there’s a boat and fishing poles still dripping wet from a day on the Mississippi River.
I hear the crush of dirt under my feet as my brother, sister, cousins and I play hide-and-seek amid rows and rows of taller-than-us corn stalks. I smell the monster-truck-sized hogs that a neighbor raised in a cesspool of mud and slop.
The issue of women’s roles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been bubbling for a while, and it’s back in the news this week. As Religion News Service reported, the Ordain Women advocacy group will be denied access to the Mormons’ all-male general priesthood session next month.
That latest news reminds me that we need to pull an important item out of our GetReligion guilt file — those stories that we want to cover but for whatever reason haven’t.
I’m referring to The New York Times’ 5,000-word, front-page Sunday story from a few weeks ago on the sea change brought by the Mormon church lowering its age requirement for female missionaries to 19 from 21:
